


and i would spread my wings / if they weren't coated in honey

by jackaalope



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Police Brutality, this is just major Sad Klaus Feels and word vomit im sorry, why are all of my fics about the same things i hope no one is subscribed to me anymore lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 09:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18050108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackaalope/pseuds/jackaalope
Summary: In which Klaus falls off a bridge.





	and i would spread my wings / if they weren't coated in honey

Klaus had wedged himself into the crook of two support beams to listen to the cars rush past on the bridge overhead and watch the sun come up over the water. The cold metal was digging into his spine and his thighs and his ass-bones, but he sat content nonetheless, one heel bashing rhythmically against a concrete block. The sun was just starting to peek over the river. Its peach-gold, though not yet warm, nuzzled up with the alcohol in his belly, purred.

He’d had a long night. A long, long night and a long day before that. And many long nights and long days before these ones. Yeah. He’d been sleeping on the stoop of an abandoned barber shop for about three weeks, and he’d been getting almost cozy there in his stoop, all alone and unbothered, nice and sheltered from the wind, up until yesterday around three AM—right when he’d been having a good, happy dream about the courtyard as a kid and the oak tree and Vanya’s shoelaces and the ladybugs, right up until then, because right then a cop had kicked him hard between the ribs and told him to get up and get a move on.

And he’d had his sleeping bag around him, so he didn’t think anything was broken or anything, but his chest was a deep, rich purple there in the shape of the pigfucker’s toe—a color that made him think of kings or jewels or something. It looked kind of sexy, if he was being honest with himself. But it did hurt. And he missed his stoop. And he was tired and the drugs and the vodka weren’t helping. Sob.

A fish flipped down in the dark water below him, sending a small shower of droplets up. They spun, caught the mango glow of the sunrise, a handful of tossed glitter—

Klaus snapped a palm to the beam again, gasping. He’d nearly lost his balance and plunged headlong in, looking down.

God, fuck all that was holy, though, it would have almost been worth it, it was so pretty. With the sun coming on and the city unfolding in the light like a treasure map smoothed out along the crease of the river: sepia and planned but not-quite-perfect. Steam from the factory. A plastic bag drifting lazily downstream. Signs of people and intrigue therein.

People. God, he missed people. No one wanted to fuck him anymore. No one wanted to be _around_ him, the sad, grimy, pitiful thing that he was. A hedonistic pleasure-seeker, prowling the backstreets, spending his days in pursuit of drug money and his nights—

No, no, no. Stop it. He was romanticizing again. It was easier to think “sad” and “grimy” and “pitiful” than to think “smelly” and “gross.” But he really was right now. And he needed to face the facts. Smelly and gross. And ugly and untrustworthy and mediocre and selfish and stupid and heartless and it was _right_ that no one wanted him, of fucking _course_ no one would—

Okay, no, he’d just look at the sun. Watch the sun and stop thinking about himself.

But, listen, even _Ben_ had left him lately. Even Ben had fucked off to wherever ghosts go when no one can hear them. The indescribable place that turned to shivery static every time Klaus tried to summon up the flashes of it he’d seen: a place with walls like lungs and that _sound_ coursing through it, a living instrument cry that went on unbroken forever.

And he’d left Ben there in that place. Alone. Left him for drugs, and more drugs, and more vodka, and less of that horrible keening _sound._ Or maybe Ben had gone back there himself. Maybe he just hadn’t been able to put up with Klaus’s shit anymore.

Speaking of which, he still had the end of that bag of OCs. Four left now. He counted them again in his pocket between thumb and forefinger: one, two, three, four smooth shapes, like pebbles or beans or blisters or something. Klaus considered. He’d railed three of them sometime in the wee hours of the morning and could sense the comedown wouldn't start sneaking in for a while yet. At least until after the sun was fully up. It wasn’t time. And John would be pissed if he went over before nightfall looking for more; lazy fuck didn’t get up ‘til his mom made dinner.

But, _ugh_ , he _wanted themmmmm…_

“Vodka, Klaus,” he said aloud. “Vodka, vodka. You can have—”

He’d cut a slit in the maroon liner fabric of his coat for highly illegitimate reasons. He fished the bottle out through it.

There was something truly heartbreaking in the sound of the little metal cap unscrewing, scratches on the silence mediated only by the cars whooshing steadily overhead. Klaus refused to feel anything about it. He tilted to the neck of the bottle to the sun, a sincere toast, and then drank. Good morning. Good morning. It was probably between five and six. Who the fuck knew? The hours all blended together when you had nowhere to be. Klaus kind of liked it that way. Yeah, it was horrible and cold and hungry and lonely and sometimes you got the shit kicked out of you by some porker in a uniform—but at least he didn’t have to try to pretend to be a real person anymore. He’d never been able to. Pretend, that was. Now he didn’t even have to try! A few months back, coming down off some speed, desperate, shaky as hell, he’d stood on the corner trying to tell anyone, someone, the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth:

_Hi, my name is Klaus. I’m twenty-two years old. I can talk to dead people. “Can” is the wrong word. Dead people talk to me and I can’t make them stop. Hi, my name is Klaus, and we are all, each one of us, surrounded by the victims of unspeakable violence, all the time, always, and I am the only person who can see or hear them…_

They’d walked faster. They’d left him alone. They’d gone home and forgotten. No one gave a fuck if he was being driven fucking batshit crazy by the souls of the deceased whispering in his ears, creeping in even through the protective haze of the drugs now. It didn’t matter. That was, somehow, reassuring.

He didn’t have to pretend to be a person if no one cared if he was a person, and that was great, because meeting society’s basic expectations were difficult when you had this kind of affliction. It was hard to be a line chef or a Costco cashier or a bowling alley janitor when you had some Jersey Mafia dude with half his face blown off gurgling at you all day about how Joey’d dropped the envelope and you oughtta go see where Joey’s at, y’know? Y’know, I think you’d better go fucking find him, son—y’know, that might be in your best interest—or Daddy might have to nail that casket shut so Mama don’t see what’s inside—y’hearin’ what I’m sayin’? Joey. S’about Joey. You know Joey, you fruity little freak? Yeah, I betcha do. I hear he’s into all sorts of weird—

More vodka! More vodka. And look at the sunrise.

Beautiful. Spilling now like an overturned liquid onto the horizon, the skyscrapers further down the river, the rows of townhouses in the colors of forgotten Easter eggs crowding up to the mouths of the bridge. Pink and gold. Ballet colors, intimate colors, vulnerable but solid.

He looked to the riverbank, maybe thirty feet to his right, maybe forty feet down, and thought about his sleeping bag.

How’d he gotten up here anyway? He hardly remembered the scrabble upwards in the dark, just the faint greenish glow of the headlights up above and the slap of water on concrete. The smells of garbage and wet weeds. Initially, he’d ambled down to the bank to find if there was somewhere safe to sleep under the overpass. He wasn’t sure what he’d climbed up the bridge for. Just kicks, probably.

His bag, though. He squinted to the bank, trying to see the place where he’d stashed it in the weeds, but it was pretty hopeless. He’d broken his glasses… what? A year ago? Two? Anyway, who the fuck stole a guy’s stinky old sleeping bag? You’d have to be a specific kind of desperate lowlife scum for that, right?

Klaus finished the vodka. He wedged himself further backwards, trying to shift in a way where his spine wouldn’t felt like it was jabbing into the metal, but it seemed kind of fruitless. He gave up; just put his head back with a groan, put his hand in his coat and pressed the heel of his hand into his stomach.

Ugh. He had a tummy ache. It was kind of par for the course, post-chugging half a liter of vodka between five and six AM, but he resented it anyway. Fuck you, body. If you’re gonna keep cozying up to corpses, I’m gonna keep you numb. Don’t bitch about it.

“Don’t bitch about it.”

Klaus shut his eyes, let the warmth of the coming sunlight play out across his cheekbone like the kiss of an estranged friend.

Oh God, he missed being kissed. He missed people. He missed _sex_. He missed being kissed and held and shown he was worth something, anything at all, that he was useful and good, even as nameless collection of warm holes, honestly, anything—

Gross. Don’t cry over that.

Don’t bitch about it. Don’t…

He slowed his breathing. In and out, like Allison had showed him those times she’d made him do yoga with her as a teenager. God, Allison. His heart broke again. In and out. In and out. He wished he had more vodka. Maybe he should take the—

In. And out. And in. And out.

The sunlight on his cheek. In and out. And in. And out.

The cars whooshing faintly overhead. In. And out. And in. And out. And in.

And out.

\---

He woke to the sound of glass shattering.

A start, confusion, a flash of recognition as he saw the ripples flaring out below, the shard with the label attached rolling manically on the concrete footing. A sense that the world was being overturned, that some giant, merciless kid somewhere had picked up a snowglobe—and then he was falling too, following the empty bottle.

His arms spread, careening for some kind of purchase in the thin morning air, finding none. He had a brief moment to observe that maybe he should have been screaming, and then he hit the water.

The solid smack of impact took all the air from his lungs. A dull pain crept over his chest before the cold began to set in, and then he couldn’t feel a thing that wasn’t _that_. The cold. In his veins, his bones, his _head_. It was late February, and parts of the river were probably still iced over. Oh God. What if he got stuck under a big patch of ice and he couldn’t get out from under it and…

He tried, desperately, to kick upwards, but he couldn’t tell if his legs were moving.

Now, he was screaming. He could hear it, but the walls of thick maroon water swallowed the sound. He tried to heave in a breath to scream again and instead sucked more that heavy, poisonous cold into his lungs.

His vocal cords went ragged, working against the water. Was he still kicking? Had he been kicking? He needed to—

_Ben! Ben. Ben, where are you? Ben, where the fuck are you? Please. Please, please…_

But, for once, he was all alone. Not a specter in sight. He was alone, and he was drowning, and the peachy rays of the sunlight were fading overhead, and his chest was thick and cut through and unbearably heavy, and the cold was melting his bones, and then the light went dark and the water closed overhead like the doors of a mausoleum swinging shut.

\---

He heard his name being called, over and over, and that was what woke him up. Not his name itself, but the monstrous, giddy wonderment of the question it posed: _Who the fuck knows my name?_

And the first thing he did was vomit. Over and over. He rolled sideways, lifted himself up on haunch and elbow, and hurled and spat until there was nothing left and his stomach felt like an empty sack. That part was easy. Felt good, even. He was a trained professional in the art of half-conscious vomiting.

There was a hand on his naked back. Klaus snatched it, scrabbling with fingernails, and put it to his sternum. His heart was going both so fast and so weak it was scaring him, like his blood might be standing still in his veins. Please. Feel my pulse. I’m not dead. Am I? Am I going to be? Is this bad? Please confirm. Please confirm.

But the hand pulled away, went to his face, his ears, his hair, smoothed it, frantic.

“Klaus,” said Diego.

Klaus opened his crusty eyes.

Uniforms. Cops. Two of them. And EMTs. And Diego. Diego? The floor of the boat was a rough, angry texture on his bare skin, the sunlight was needley, the white, white, white paint blinding.

Klaus started cackling. Ragged, frenzied sounds that turned into a hacking cough, and then to more retching. He pounded a fist on his thigh, threw his head back, gasped up at the sky. It was blue now.

“M’I _dead?_ ” he wheezed. “I mean, what the _fuck?”_

“Klaus,” said Diego again, reaching for him as if _that_ was an answer. Klaus pulled away.

“I feel like Dorothy,” he laughed. His voice was so hoarse it didn’t even sound like his. “Aygo, where’s your bicycle? Where’s my _god_ damn dog? Huh? Ahaha!”

Diego just looked at him, something like fear in his eyes. There was water dripping out of his hair, down his cheeks.

“We gotta check vitals,” said one of the EMTs. She, too, was sopping wet, wrapped ’round in a silver blanket. “Cloud?”

“Klaus,” Diego corrected.

“Klaus, excuse me. Jamal here’s gonna take your vitals, alright?”

It was more of a command to Jamal than an alert to Klaus, but Jamal was already ready with kit in hand. He came forward and kneeled just beside Diego.

Diego did not move over one bit to make room.

“We’re gonna check your pulse,” said Jamal, cracking the plastic latches open, and Klaus nodded. He ran his eyes attentively over Jamal’s face. Smooth-shaven. Clean. Good posture. Probably fresh out of high school. He’d lost his grandmother in May. She knocked on Klaus’s windows, then beat on them with the heels of warm, plump hands. Big brown eyes. Tearing up.

Fuck off.

“Okay, okay, Jamal. You go for it, man.”

Jamal put the bell of his stethoscope to the outstretched crook of Klaus’s elbow. He showed no signs of horror at all the damage there. Good kid. Professional. But he did pull back, far too soon to have gotten any reading, and shake his head.

“Breathe in for me.” Cold metal on Klaus’s chest. “And out. And in again.”

Jamal shook his head. He made a little sound through his teeth: “Cheeeee…”

Klaus leaned away.

“ _Brrrr_. Hey, am I able to get one of those blankets?”

No one said anything, they all just looked at him with that familiar, cagey skepticism. After a moment, one of the cops—ponytail, casual, and, oh God, he was not even gonna _start_ trying to sift through all the dead folks clawing out for _her_ —turned and walked off.

“Any drugs or medications?” Jamal asked, a little too loudly.

“No, definitely not,” said Klaus. “I’m a Mormon, so... religious reasons. You understand. Although—” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “—sometimes do I cheat and have a cup of Earl Grey in the mornings. Don’t tell Father—ahhh! Thank you, officer!”

She’d returned with one of the silver blankets in hand. He tugged it around himself, quaking.

“Klaus,” said Diego, rubbing a hand over his eyes, “just tell them what you took. No one’s gonna arrest you.”

The other cop cleared his throat.

“What’d we say?” he asked Diego, gruffly. “No badge.”

That buzzcut. That dumb, growly, put-on voice. Klaus had a flash of recognition.

“Hey, asshole, don’t I know you?” Klaus asked, straightening up a little. He tried to get up, to pull back the blanket to show the bruises on his chest, but only managed as far as his knees before he got too dizzy and his eyes started rolling.

“Woah, woah,” said Jamal, reaching out to steady him. Diego got there first. His hand, apparently, could wrap all the way around Klaus’s upper arm.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Klaus heard Diego ask, quietly.

“Most likely,” Jamal said. “We’ll need to take him in, emergency and then probably psych, figure out what he took, get him stable, evaluate the suicide risk…”

“Okay, let’s get the first step over with.”

Diego’s hand was gone. Klaus, bleary, watched him hop up to his feet. Now, what in God’s name was that boy wearing? They let him out in public like that? Kid looked like an awkward teenager trying to sneak into a leather club—

—and, oh God, oh God, he had Klaus’s coat over on the bench, and he was turning it inside out and, from the slit in the lining, he was tearing it open.

“Oh,” said Klaus, “n-no, no, _hey!_ Hey, that’s personal property, huh? That’s a violation of—”

Too weak to get up, Klaus wriggled his fingers desperately at Diego from where he sat. He was suddenly, deeply, nauseatingly aware that his nails were chipped bubblegum pink.

Oh, he was _fucked_.

Diego found the pills. He tossed them over to the lady cop with the ponytail.

“Oxy,” she said.

“That’ll do it,” said Jamal.

Klaus glared at him. I take it back, he thought. Bad kid. Highly unprofessional.

Buzzcut started growling something into his radio, his back turned for Klaus couldn’t hear. Diego was staring at a spot somewhere out on the horizon. He was so much _older_ than Klaus remembered him being. Jesus. How long had it been? Four years? Yeah. The beginnings of premature lines on his face now, barely visible, but still there. Sad little squint lines by his eyes, the kind you’d miss if you saw him every day, or never notice if you saw him just the once. He looked tired, tough, but still somehow boyish. Or maybe that was just Klaus remembering the teenager underneath, and inability to separate this new man from the kid he’d known.

“Hey, you still with me?” Jamal asked, waving a hand in front of Klaus’s face.

“Wha—yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m with you, Jamal. Ends of the earth.”

“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Alright, Claude, I’m gonna need you to stick your hand out, like this, squeeze my fingers…”

**Author's Note:**

> you wanna try adding more dashes in the middles of sentences, jack--do you really wanna do that?


End file.
